I haven't personally, but I think I caught a faint glimpse after attending --- not one --- but two back-to-back marketing conferences in Boston this year: Hypergrowth and Inbound.

My head is still spinning from dozens of high-impact speakers and connections, but I've distilled the most actionable, valuable insights into 25 bite-sized nuggets you can start leveraging today to grow your business.

P.S. --- I also boiled down insights from ALL the sessions I attended into a 41-page master document. Want my raw, unfiltered notes? Go grab 'em here for free.

4) Anchor your brand's story around a big shift

For telling an effective selling and positioning story: Start by communicating a "big shift" that's happened in the world. In Andy Raskin's words, "Start by naming the undeniable, relevant change in the world."

Next, prove that the change will create winners and losers. Make it painfully clear that there's a tangible cost to sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing.

Finally, show the "promised land" of what's possible by using your customers' own words.

Marketing culture leads us to believe investments must be 100% measurable from day one. But... It often pays off to invest in "hard to measure" marketing channels.

For example, Moz's most popular content series, "Whiteboard Fridays" started out as their worst-performing blog post type of all time. However, their vision, forward momentum, and constant learning transformed it into a highly successful content investment!

Most marketers only consider SEO and PPC when they're jockeying to attract visitors from search. But what about these relevant (but often overlooked) search factors everyone in 2017 can consider?

Google Images

Google Maps

YouTube

SERP Features

Social and Shopping Sites such as Amazon, Facebook, & Reddit

6) Successfully targeting high-intent SEO keywords is more impactful than lower rankings on high volume keywords.

Want to boost sales and profit from search traffic? Stop focusing on just the volume of keywords --- pay closer attention to the searchers' intent too.

7) Stop writing emails that sound like they're from a "business."

People don't hate email; they hate stupid email.

Before you hit send, make sure your company's emails provide direct value to the right people at the right time --- just like a personal assistant.

Chief Marketing Officers in hyper-competitive industries like SaaS are reporting that emails that look like they're from a "business" (mostly meaning they're focused on the company's products and updates, rather than direct value for the audience) aren't working as well as they used to across the board for B2B marketing.

Content marketing and blogs? They're also struggling to find a firm footing in over-saturated verticals. They can absolutely still work, but it's tough when you're writing about the same things as your competitors in the same way and you're in a tech company.

5.4 people per account are involved in standard B2B buying decisions. That's another reason Account-Based Marketing, which targets stakeholders at every relevant role, continue to gain traction.

Want to land your biggest deal ever? Your sales and marketing teams can work together to reach out to multiple decision-makers across your targeted companies at the same time --- but expect a significant learning curve to get it right.

13) Build your sales and marketing team from the top of the funnel first.

Instead, he recommends growing your marketing team first to attract, nurture, and convert a steady stream of leads. This allows companies to consistently attract more leads and avoid an overly narrow focus on sales.

14) Get serious about your "culture code."

Your company can scale decision-making faster and spread ownership when every individual on your team knows and acts on your mission statement and core values.

Your growth team isn't just in charge of growing revenue, they own the entire customer journey!

Every member of your team across customer success, marketing, and sales needs to know their role and take radical ownership over it. This also means setting clear expectations and goals between teams.

Set up checks and balances between teams to ensure your business grows with minimal stress. (Example: Customer success can help salespeople from "overpromising," which will keep happier, better-qualified customers around longer!)

What traits should you keep top-of-mind when you're hiring marketers? For starters, look for people who are:

Motivated by metrics

Analytical truth-seekers

Coachable

Lifelong learners

Building T-shaped experience --- meaning they have a broad understanding of the fundamentals, but specialize in a couple key skills

17) Reshape your sales process to let the automation take care of the things that people shouldn't be doing.

Humans are better than machines at nurturing authentic relationships. However, machines will always win when it comes to raw consistency and reliability.

Why not benefit from both?

Use automation tools and CRM workflows to follow-up consistently, provide general education about your offerings, and pre-qualify sales leads.

This frees your best salespeople to truly shine by giving undivided attention and value in every interaction with the most qualified prospects.

18) You can increase your prices by about 20% when you're seen as an expert.

Just stop to think about this for a second.

Adding an additional 20% to the ticket price of your product or service results in a MASSIVE difference to your profit margin. It's much more efficient to boost your profit than your revenue --- so why wouldn't you?

Carving out a niche in your space that you can dominate as the undisputed industry leader is critical, which is why you should....

19) Invest heavily in these two types of content to become a master of your community.

Scott Meyer from 9Clouds reports remarkable success in two primary content types for establishing yourself as an industry expert: original research and video courses.

To create original research, send out a survey to a key group in your industry asking about a relevant --- but hard-to-measure --- trend or behavior. You can compile your survey findings as a "State of the Union" report for your niche. Rinse and repeat this process to build your mastery over time and become a source of unique insights.

Video courses provide an excellent format for educational video that aligns with your best work too. Scott recommends creating a mini-course for every core offering your business provides.

It's a win-win since your prospects educate and sell themselves on your product or service --- and they benefit from your hard-won experience. Of course, the courses also position your team as domain experts yet again.

Don't make your content marketing unnecessarily difficult by rehashing the same topics as your competition in the same, tired ways.

Instead, try to think, "What is no one else talking about in my industry?"

Your readers (and organic search traffic) will thank you.

21) Fill your marketing calendar with 10x ideas, not 10% ideas.

Coschedule's founder Garrett Moon advocates making two lists of ideas for your marketing:

Ideas to grow by 10%

Ideas to grow by 10X

Those are your only two options! Forcing yourself to intentionally distinguish between marginal improvements and massive moonshot ideas every 3-6 months will train you to identify an entirely different class of growth opportunities.

22) Create a "content standard" and hit it every time to publish the BEST content in your industry.

Don't you want your blog posts to be the best your audience has ever seen on the subject?

Coschedule settled on the following standards for every blog post:

Stick to a core topic

Define a powerful keyword

Back it up with research

Make it comprehensive and actionable

Always optimized with a single call to action

Also, write down your "content core." Simply put, it's the overlap between what your audience cares about and the unique value you provide as a business.

One of the easiest ways to squeeze better results out of your current website is to re-evaluate your value proposition and call-to-action on every page.

Derrick Weiss from Impact puts it this way, "Align your CTA copy with your value proposition! Your value proposition should be short and sweet, and offer your personas a strong way to fix their problems and combat their fears."

It's a simple, but powerful fix. Ensure your messages on every page speak directly to your customer's fears and problems, then give them clear next steps to solve them!